The world’s second-largest digital asset Ethereum (ETH) which officially launched three years ago, was initially lauded as a fully decentralized, open-source, public platform that would pave the way for data processing and on-blockchain computing.
Hence, the project, which tagged its blockchain as a “world computer,” immediately garnered traction from the entire crypto ecosystem. Ether, the native token of the Ethereum ecosystem, bounded quickly past many top altcoins to firmly station itself in the market’s top 10.
However, as the network’s ecosystem evolved with an influx of daily transactions and active users, it became clear that the network’s Proof of Work (PoW) algorithm would fail to stand through the test of time. This looming issue was foreseen by the most dedicated contributors of the Ethereum project, leading many developers and researchers to put in hundreds of hours in a bid to solve the issue of scalability.
During Devcon4, Ethereum’s important event, Ran Neuner, With CNBC spoke with Justin Drake, a researcher on the Ethereum blockchain and its protocols regarding the scalability issues that trouble Ethereum (ETH). Ethereum (ETH) Price Today – ETH / USD
| Name | Price | 24H % |
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Ethereum 2.0 (Serenity) is the Future of Blockchain
According to Drake, 2.0, also known as “Serenity” contains a host of fresh, radical ideas including a move from PoW (proof-of-work) to (PoS) proof-of-stake. Sharding to address scalability is also another huge idea. Sharding is a term for describing splitting digital data sets into “shards.” For decentralized networks, developers insist that sharding can ensure that consensus mechanisms are more efficient, making way for higher transactional/data.
While sharding is undisputedly a game-changer, many experts in the space have criticized the developers behind the project for being slow. According to Drake there have been “mistakes” as well as over-promising, plus miscommunication and underestimating how complex things actually are. Drake added that “in reality,” the Serenity project has been moving just fine, that researchers continue to propose better designs. Drake says they “are moving extremely fast to meet up.”
Ethereum (ETH) Constantinople May Facilitate Pure PoS Consensus
When Neuner talked about several other delays like the multi-month delay seen recently with the Ethereum Constantinople project, being an integral part of getting Serenity up and going, Drake attributed the delays to the plans of developers’ to ensure that Serenity is backward and compatible with Ethereum 1.0. This would have required developers to ensure that scaling solutions are implemented into the legacy chain.
Now, however, the network’s development team has moved on from this goal. They have decided to start from scratch using a new blockchain protocol. Although this may allow ETH to scale further eventually, Drake indicated that the novel environment had made most developers overly ambitious, which is also a delay. Yet the prominent crypto proponent explained that Serenity Phase 0 would arrive in 2019, which is just a year before the start of Serenity’s 1st phase and then Phase 2 (EVM) comes up in 2021.
The ascension of the project to its next phase may eventually facilitate a pure PoS consensus, as well as faster times for synchronous confirmation (from 8-16 seconds), and economic finality (between 10-20 minutes).” Most importantly, ensure a 1,000x scalability which will fix the majority of Ethereum’s scalability shortcomings.
Princess Ogono is a writer, lawyer and fitness enthusiast. She believes cryptocurrencies are the future. When she's not writing, she spends time with her adorable cat, Ginger and works out often.
